Pony Jackscolt and the Lightning Hoof
by Colt in the Moon
Summary: Pony Jackscolt was just your average colt, until he found out he found out his sire was actually the Equian Alicorn Ponyseidon, god of the sea. When Jupony's lightning hoof, the hoof which he uses to make thunder and lightning, is stolen, Pony is suspect.
1. Chapter 1

_I own neither Percy Jackson nor My Little Pony. I am writing this purely for amusement._

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><p><strong><em>Pony Jackscolt and the Lightning Hoof<em>**

**1-I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER**

Look, I didn't want to be a half-hoof.

If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your dam or sire told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-hoof is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

If you're a normal foal, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Pony Jackscolt.

I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled foals in upstate Neigh York.

Am I a troubled foal?

Yeah. You could say that.

I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manehattan- twenty-eight mental-case foals and two teachers on a yellow school carriage, heading to the Metroponyan Museum of Art to look at ancient Equian and Eponan stuff.

I know-it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged stallion in a motorized wheel cart. He had thinning mane and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Eponan armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.

I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Buck, was I wrong.

See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Marehtoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school carraige, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the SeaPony World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that… Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Diamond Tiara, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac filly, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was a goat. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his hooves. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.

Anyway, Diamond Tiara was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.

Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

He dodged another piece of Diamond's lunch.

"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.

"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Diamond Tiara right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a filly about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Cudd, would give me the evil eye.

Mrs. Cudd was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown. And she was a cow.

From her first day, Mrs. Cudd loved Diamond Tiara and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.

One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Cudd was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Equian funeral art.

Finally, Diamond Tiara snickered something about the naked stallion on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackscolt," he said, "did you have a comment?"

My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Koltnos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because …"

"Well…" I racked my brain to remember. "Koltnos was the king alicorn, and-"

"Alicorn?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Trotan," I corrected myself. "And … he didn't trust his foals, who were the alicorns. So, um, Koltnos ate them, right? But his wife hid foal Jupony, and gave Koltnos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Jupony grew up, he tricked his sire, Koltnos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eeew!" said one of the fillies behind me.

"-and so there was this big fight between the alicorns and the Trotans," I continued, "and the alicorns won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind me, Diamond Tiara mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Koltnos ate his kids.'"

"And why, Mr. Jackscolt," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Tiara's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

"Busted," Grover muttered.

"Shut up," Diamond hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Diamond got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackscolt. Jupony did indeed feed Koltnos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five foals, who, of course, being immortal alicorns, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Trotan's stomach. The alicorns defeated their sire, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Trotarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Cudd, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the fillies holding their stomachs, the colts pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackscolt."

I knew that was coming.

I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go- intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.

"About the Trotans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."

"Oh."

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Pony Jackscolt."

I wanted to get angry, this colt pushed me so hard.

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Eponan armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Equian and Eponan pony who had ever lived, and their dam, and what alicorn they worshiped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No-he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.

I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this filly's funeral.

He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the hoof traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across Neigh York state had been weird since Winter Wrap Up. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.

Nopony else seemed to notice. Some of the colts were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Diamond Tiara was trying to pickpocket something from a mare's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Cudd wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everypony wouldn't know we were from that school-the school for loser flanks who couldn't make it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover asked.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not a genius."

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my dam's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelcart at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Diamond Tiara appeared in front of me with her ugly friends-I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.

"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.

I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Diamond was sitting on her flank in the fountain, screaming, "Pony pushed me!"

Mrs. Cudd materialized next to us.

Some of the foals were whispering: "Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed her-"

I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Cudd was sure poor little Diamond was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Cudd turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-"

"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

"Come with me," Mrs. Cudd said.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."

I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Cudd scared Grover to death.

She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.

"But-"

"You-will-stay-here."

Grover looked at me desperately.

"It's okay, buddy," I told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs. Cudd barked at me. "Now."

Diamond Tiara smirked.

I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turned to face Mrs. Cudd, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.

How'd she get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.

I wasn't so sure.

I went after Mrs. Cudd.

Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

I looked back up. Mrs. Cudd had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Diamond at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Equian and Eponan section.

Except for us, the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Cudd stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Equian alicorns. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Cudd. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it…

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.

I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.

I said, "I'll-I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"We are not fools, Pony Jackscolt," Mrs. Cudd said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."

I didn't know what she was talking about.

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't…"

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her hooves stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't a cow anymore. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hoof.

"What ho, Pony!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Cudd lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hoof, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword-Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Cudd spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.

My knees were jelly. My hooves were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honey!"

And she flew straight at me.

Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!

Mrs. Cudd was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

I was alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in my hoof.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nopony was there but me.

My hooves were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I went back outside.

It had started to rain.

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Diamond Tiara was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your flank."

I said, "Who?"

"Our teacher. Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Diamond what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Cudd was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.

"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackscolt."

I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Cudd?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other chaperone. Mrs. Cudd. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Pony, there is no Mrs. Cudd on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Cudd at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"


	2. Chapter 2

_I own neither Percy Jackson nor My Little Pony. I am writing this purely for amusement._

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><p><strong>2- THREE OLD MARES KNIT THE SOCKS OF DEATH<strong>

I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.

This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Cheerilee—a perky mare whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Winter Wrap Up.

Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Cudd reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.  
>It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Cudd had never existed.<p>

Almost.

But Grover couldn't fool me.  
>When I mentioned the name Cudd to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.<p>

Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.  
>I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Cudd with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.<p>

The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Marelantic that year.

I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Diamond Tiara and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.

Finally, when our Equestrian teacher, Mr. Nickel-Hooves, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.

The headpony sent my dam a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.

Fine, I told myself. Just fine.

I was stablesick.

I wanted to be with my dam in our little apartment on the Upper East Flank, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepsire and his stupid poker parties.

And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange.

I worried how he'd survive next year without me.

I'd miss Eponian class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.

As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.  
>I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.<p>

The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Camelbridge Guide to Equian Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Ponydictes and Ponydeuces. And conjugating those Eponian verbs? Forget it.

I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.

I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I will accept only the best from you, Pony Jackscolt.

I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.

I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.

I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.

I was three trots from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said, "... worried about Pony, sir."

I froze.

I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.

I inched closer.

"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too—"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the colt to mature more."

"But he may not have time. The summer sun celebration dead line— "

"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."

"Sir, he saw her... ."

"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."

"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Pony alive until next fall—"

The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.

Mr. Brunner went silent.

My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much bigger than my wheelcart-bound teacher, and it had a horn coming out of it's forehead

I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.

A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.

A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.

Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter wrap up."

"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."

"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.

I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.

Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.

Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Eponian exam notes like he'd been there all night.

"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"

I didn't answer.

"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"

"Just... tired."

I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.

I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.

But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Equian and Eponan names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Pony," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."

His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Diamond Tiara smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.

I mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his cart back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

My eyes stung.

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get bucked out.

"Right," I said, trembling.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Pony. That's nothing to be—"

"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."

"Pony—"

But I was already gone.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.

The other colts were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Trotzerland. Another was cruising the Ponibbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their sires were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nopony, from a family of noponies.

They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.

What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.

"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."

They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.

The only pony I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manehattan on the same train as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole train ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.

Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the train.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"

I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"

"Oh ... not much. What's the summer sun celebration dead-line?"

He winced. "Look, Pony ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"

"Grover—"

"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Cudd, and ..."

"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:

**_Grover Underwood_**  
><strong><em>Keeper<em>**  
><strong><em>Half-Hoof Hill<em>**  
><strong><em>Long Island, Neigh York<em>**  
><strong><em>(800) 009-0009<em>**

"What's Half—"

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."

My heart sank. Grover had a summer stable. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.

"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."

He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?"

It came out harsher than I meant it to.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Pony, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."

I stared at him.

All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.

"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.

The engineer cursed and slowed the train to a stop on the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the engineer announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing wagons. On the other side, across four lanes of dirt and dust, shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There were no customers, just three old mares sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.

I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The mare on the right knitted one of them. The mare on the left knitted the other. The mare in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.

All three mares looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver manes tied back in white bandannas, bony hooves sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.

The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.

I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.

"Grover?" I said. "Hey, bud—"

"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"

"Not funny, Pony. Not funny at all."

The old mare in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.

"We're getting on the train," he told me. "Come on."

"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."

"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.

Across the road, the old mares were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic.

Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for.

At the rear of the train, the engineer wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The train shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The passengers cheered.

"Darn right!" yelled the engineer. He slapped the train with his hat. "Everypony back on board!"

Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.

Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.

"Grover?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling me?"

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Pony, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old mares? What is it about them, buddy? They're not like ... Mrs. Cudd, are they?"

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand mares were something much, much worse than Mrs. Cudd. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."  
>"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."<br>He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.  
>He said, "You saw her snip the cord."<br>"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.  
>"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."<br>"What last time?"  
>"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."<br>"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"  
>"Let me walk you home from the train station. Promise me."<br>This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.  
>"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.<br>No answer.  
>"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"<br>He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.


	3. Chapter 3

_3 GROVER UNEXPECTEDLY LOSES HIS PANTS_

Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.

I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead horse, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"

Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi-wagon uptown.

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver-pony.

A word about my dam, before you meet her.

Her name is Sally Jackscolt and she's the best mare in the world, which just proves my theory that the best ponies have the rottenest luck. Her own parents died in a cloud crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent flight school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

The only good break she ever got was meeting my sire.

I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My dam doesn't like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She doesn't have any pictures.

See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Marelantic on some important journey, and he never came back.

Lost at sea, my dam told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.

She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her flight school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy foal.

Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym saddles.

Between the two of us, we made my dam's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.

I walked into our little apartment stable, hoping my dam would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.

Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."

"Where's dam?"

"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"

That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?

Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his mane, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.

He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Manehattan, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "colt secret." Meaning, if I told my dam, he would punch my lights out.

"I don't have any cash," I told him.

He raised a greasy eyebrow.

Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.

"You took a wagon from the bus station," he said. Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bits in change. If somepony expects to live under this roof, then he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"

Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."

"Am I right?" Gabe repeated.

Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.

"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."

"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"

I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.

I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.

Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Cudd, or the sound of that old fruit mare's shears snipping the yarn.

But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.

Then I heard my dam's voice. "Pony?"

She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.

My dam can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown mane, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.

"Oh, Pony." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Hearth's Warming!"

Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on Equestria uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.

We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little colt doing all right?

I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.

From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"

I gritted my teeth.

My dam is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.

For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Until that trip to the museum ...

"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"

"No, Dam."

I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Cudd and the three old mares with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.

She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.

"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."

My eyes widened. "Montauk?"

"Three nights—same cabin."

"When?"

She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."

I couldn't believe it. My dam and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.

Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"

I wanted to punch him, but I met my dam's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.

"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."

Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"

"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."

"Of course he will," my dam said evenly. "Your steis jsireust worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."

Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"

"Yes, honey," my dam said.

"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."

"We'll be very careful."

Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."

Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.

But my dam's eyes warned me not to make him mad.

Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."

Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.

"Yeah, whatever," he decided.

He went back to his game.

"Thank you, Pony," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"

For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my dam too felt an odd chill in the air.

But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my mane and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.

An hour later we were ready to leave.

Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my dam's saddlebags to the wagon. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.

"Not a scratch on this wagon, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."

Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.

Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hoof gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a bent hoof over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the flank and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.

I got in the Camaro and told my dam to step on it.

Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.

I loved the place.

We'd been going there since I was a baby. My dam had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my sire.

As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.

We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.

I guess I should explain the blue food.

See, Gabe had once told my dam there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my dam went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackscolt, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.

When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. She told me stories about when she was a filly, back before her parents died in the cloud crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough bits to quit the candy shop.

Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my sire. Her eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.

"He was kind, Pony," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."

She fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Pony. He would be so proud."

I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive colt with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.

"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"

She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."

"But... he knew me as a baby."

"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."

I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.

I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My dam had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me ...

I felt angry at my sire. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my dam. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.

"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"

She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.

"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."

"Because you don't want me around?" I regretted the words as soon as they were out.

My dam's eyes welled with tears. She took my hoof, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Pony, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."

Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.

"Because I'm not normal," I said.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Pony. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."

"Safe from what?"

She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.

During third grade, a big pony in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the pony only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.

Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My dam screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.

In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.

I knew I should tell my dam about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Cudd at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.

"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my dam said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Pony—the place your sire wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."

"My sire wanted me to go to a special school?"

"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."

My head was spinning. Why would my sire—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to her about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?

"I'm sorry, Pony," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."

"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."

She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.

That night I had a vivid dream.

It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden griffin, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The griffin swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading them to fight harder.

I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the griffin dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, No!

I woke with a start.

Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or griffin on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.

With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."

I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.

Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.

My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.

Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.

"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"

My dam looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.

"Pony," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"

I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"

I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Equian and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...

My dam looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Pony. Tell me now!"

I stammered something about the old mares at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Cudd, and my dam stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.

She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"

Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.

Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves. My best friend was a goat.


End file.
